8K passengers in 8 trains on Day 1 of railway reboot

Indian Railways resumed its passenger services after a gap of nearly two months on Tuesday with eight air-conditioned trains carrying a total of 8,121 people leaving for their destinations across the coun- try, according to the railway ministry.

While three of them left for Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), Dibrugarh (Assam) and Bengaluru (Karnataka) from Delhi, the others began their journeys to the national capital from Howrah (West Bengal), Rajendra Nagar (Bihar), Mumbai Central (Maharashtra), Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Bengaluru.

Railways also reported 169,039 passenger bookings in 24 hours, after the online selling of tickets began at 6pm on Monday. Officials are accepting bookings up to seven days in advance for the 15 pairs of special trains the government has announced to resume passenger services.

“After an unprecedented temporary suspension of passenger train services to curb the spread of Covid-19, New Delhi-bilaspur Rajdhani Superfast train becomes the first train to resume

operations,” railway minister Piyush Goyal said, soon after the train left for Bilaspur at 4pm. These premium passenger trains, which have a fare structure similar to that of Rajdhani trains, carried about 1,000 passengers each. They are being run in addition to Shramik Special services that are ferrying migrant workers stuck in different parts of India due to the lockdown to their destinations. The railways also said 575 Shramik Special trains operated with 680,000 migrants till Tuesday.

The government will operate 149 flights from 31 countries, including the US, Australia and France, during the second phase of Vande Bharat Mission, the repatriation drive of Indian citizens stranded abroad, from May 16. People will be allowed to board after health screening.››p6